Budget video editing has never had it so good. With the capabilities of an average PC now easily able to cope with the demands of cutting, overlaying and playing back video edits in real time, the competition among providers vying to offer the best features for the best price – along with ease of use – has really heated up.

That’s great news for editors, but the problem still remains of which option to go for – which is more important, in-house effects and pre-prepared style templates, or in-depth functionality allowing greater creativity? Ultimately, you have to take a look at what’s on offer and decide what suits you best, but PowerDirector enjoys a decent reputation, offering the ability to make good edits without a steep learning curve, while it also offers a fair amount of style templates to experiment with and some decent customisation.

Design and layout

The main screen at start up is the editing setup, made up of a preview screen at the top-right, the timeline along the bottom and, at top-left, a tabbed screen gives access to the libraries of media (video, images and sound), video effects, picture-in-picture effects, titles, transitions, audio-mixing capabilities, voiceovers, and panes for the addition of chapter markers and subtitles for DVD preparation.

Along the top of the screen are buttons that show you where you are in the edit process: Capture, Edit, Produce and Create Disc. By default, you start at the Edit stage, but clicking on Capture prompts the program to look for all the attached audio and video devices. 

If you have a DV camcorder already attached by FireWire it should pick this up immediately and you can import footage using the program to control the cam. Alternatively, if you have a webcam connected to the PC, the program should also pick this up, and you can actually start recording MPEG files from this into PowerDirector directly.